Please join us for a special brown bag lunch with Ruby Sales on Wednesday, November 7th at 12:30PM.
Ruby will be receiving the "Emma Lazarus Poet of the People" Award at the upcoming 2018 JFREJ Awards on December 5th (all info at www.jfrej.org/JFREJAwards2018) and is joining us for an intimate conversation about her perspectives on organizing and the political and cultural moment we are in.
Please RSVP - location will be confirmed once we have a sense of attendance. You are welcome to bring your own lunch. Venue will be fully accessible.
About Ruby Sales:
Ruby Nell Sales is a nationally-recognized human-rights activist, public theologian, and social critic, whose articles and work appear in many journals, online sites, and books. Under the tutelage of Professor Jean Wiley, Sales joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960’s as a teenager at Tuskegee University and went to work as a student freedom fighter in Lowndes County, Alabama. There, she worked with Bob Mants, Gloria Larry, Janet Moses, Jimmy Rogers, Willie Vaughn, and local people that included Clara Maul and John Huelett.
In August 1965, Sales, along with other SNCC workers, joined young people from Fort Deposit, Alabama, who organized a demonstration to protest the actions of the local White grocery store owners who had cheated their parents. The group was arrested and held in jail and then suddenly released. Jonathan Daniels, a White seminarian and freedom worker from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts was assassinated as he pulled Sales out of the line of fire, when they attempted to enter Cash Grocery Store to buy sodas for other freedom workers who were released from jail. Tom Coleman also shot and deeply wounded Father Richard Morrisroe, a priest from Chicago. Despite threats of violence, Sales was determined to attend the trial of Daniels' murderer, Tom Coleman, and to testify on behalf of her slain colleague. Coleman was acquitted by a jury of all white peers.
As a social activist, Sales has served on many committees to further the work of racial, sexual, gender, and class reconciliation, education, and awareness. She has served on the Steering Committee for International Women's Day, Washington, D.C.; the James Porter Colloquium Committee, Howard University, Washington, D.C.; the Coordinating Committee, People's Coalition, Washington, D.C.; the President's Committee On Race, University of Maryland; and the Coalition on Violence Against Women, Amnesty International, Washington, D.C. She was a founding member of Sage Magazine: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. Sales received a Certificate of Gratitude for her work on Eyes on the Prize. Additionally, she was featured in Broken Ground: A Film on Race Relations in the South, by Broken Ground Productions. From 1991-1994, Sales founded and directed the national nonprofit organization Women of All Colors, dedicated to improving the overall quality of life for women, their families, and the communities in which they live. Women of All Colors organized a week-long SisterSpeak that brought more than 80 Black women together to set a national agenda.
Throughout her career, Sales has mentored young people and provided support and venues for an intergenerational community of developing and seasoned social justice performing and creative artists. Sales has a deep commitment to providing the education, practical experiences, and frame of references to contest racism and add their voices to the public conversations on the many streams of oppression that emerge from them.
Presently, Sales serves as the founder and director of the SpiritHouse Project. The SpiritHouse Project is a national nonprofit organization that uses the arts, research, education, action, and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for racial, economic, and social justice, as well as for spiritual maturity. SpiritHouse roots its work today in exposing the extrajudicial murders of African-Americans by White vigilantes and police.